Lufthansa clips 900 flights as pilots’ strike drags on

AFP / Bloomberg

German heavyweight airline Lufthansa cancelled a further 890 flights on Wednesday as pilots remained on strike in a long-running wage dispute.
Lufthansa said some 98,000 passengers were grounded by the walkout, which flight crew extended to long-haul flights after Tuesday’s action affected only short-haul services.
The airline has sought to limit the impact of the strike by introducing an emergency timetable.
Some 4,461 flights have been cancelled in the six days of strikes since last Wednesday, according to Lufthansa.
Pilots launched their 15th round of industrial action since spring 2014 on Tuesday, after a two-day pause on Sunday and Monday that saw talks break down with management.
Directors and pilots have failed to agree on a wage increase, and Lufthansa’s offer of a mediation process has been flatly rejected by pilots’ union Vereinigung Cockpit.
The flight crew organisation plans a demonstration at Lufthansa hub airport Frankfurt late on Wednesday morning.
Other airlines in the group, including Eurowings, Swiss, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines, are not affected by the strike and are running a normal service.
Cockpit has not so far called for the strike to continue into Thursday.

Workers plan competing
rallies in rift over strike
Deutsche Lufthansa AG employees plan competing rallies at Frankfurt airport as some workers side with management to oppose a pilots strike entering its sixth day.
Ground employees at Lufthansa’s Frankfurt hub, which is bearing the brunt of the walkout, started a counter-demonstration in preparation for a late-morning a protest scheduled by the Vereinigung Cockpit pilots union.
“This is not about pilot-bashing, but our people are angry, and rightfully so,” Ruediger Fell, head of the works council representing Lufthansa’s ground crews in Frankfurt, said in an interview. “The raise demanded by our pilots is what our workers earn in a month, and the company will try to make up for that spending elsewhere.”
Vereinigung Cockpit is seeking a 20 percent pay raise, equivalent to 3.7 percent a year, covering the period from the last contract’s expiration in 2012 through 2017. The series of strikes this month caused Lufthansa to cancel almost 4,500 flights, including 890 on Wednesday, disrupting travel for more than half a million people. The walkouts are putting Lufthansa’s plan to match last year’s 1.82 billion-euro ($1.93 billion) operating profit at risk, with analysts Mark Simpson and Jack Diskin at Goodbody Stockbrokers estimating the cost at 100 million euros.

Reorganization Dispute
The dispute is part of a long-running spat over wages, working conditions and the role of discount unit Eurowings as Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spohr reorganizes the German airline to face discount competitors in the region as well as long-haul operators based in the Persian Gulf. Lufthansa reached pay and retirement deals with ground employees a year ago and with flight attendants in July. Following Spohr’s failed legal moves last week to block the pilots’ strike, Vereinigung Cockpit retaliated by extending the walkout.
Lufthansa shares fell 2.5 percent to 12.12 euros as of 10:28 a.m. in Frankfurt. The stock has dropped 17 percent this year, valuing the company at 5.68 billion euros.
“The market puts pressure on us in many areas, and demands far-reaching concessions so that we all can have a future at Lufthansa — on the ground, in the cabin and in the cockpit,” the works council said. “It is about drawing the right conclusions and fighting jointly for our future.”
On top of the internal labor divisions, the pilots dispute has prompted one of Lufthansa’s biggest customers to voice frustration. The work stoppages are “increasingly damaging to Germany’s economy and the nation’s ‘branding’ of reliability and quality,” Siemens AG CEO Joe Kaeser told Bild newspaper in an interview.
Lufthansa has offered a 2.5 percent raise for a six-year period and last week reiterated its willingness to lift that to 4.4 percent plus a bonus payment, provided pilots accept changes to retirement benefits, seniority bonuses and other perks.